American Airlines has struggled under its current leadership, but new Chief Commercial Officer Nat Pieper offers a rare reason for optimism.
“I’d love to see the executives at Delta and United have to humble themselves a bit.” Preach. Healthy competition makes everyone better. Captured markets make ‘em all worse.
Chicago-based travelers demand more international options, but American Airlines’ strategy of routing its own and partner flights through Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) has pushed customers into the Star Alliance network. There is no reason why Qatar Airways and Cathay Pacific shouldn't operate twice-daily flights from O'Hare (ORD), or why carriers like Starlux and Qantas lack a presence there entirely. Chicago generates more than enough local and connecting traffic to sustain these routes.
In general, DFW is such an unappealing hub for people not in Texas. It's too far out of the way to connect through and way, way too sensitive to weather
Aside from select members of his immediate family, who does Isom have respect from?
"American needs to stop just making all of these little, incremental announcements..." could not agree more. I'd argue AA's biggest PR issue right now is that people aren't aware of the positive changes, or that they're even trying.
I just think it’s so crazy that both AA and UA ripped TVs out only to need to put them back in because screens were always the right answer. Glad someone is finally recognizing that to be premium you need premium features
Out of curiosity I looked up Vasu Raja to see what he's been doing since leaving American. According to his LinkedIn he started a company called Dihedral, which is some sort of data company to "help companies move from disconnected data to active "customer orchestration." They strive to "make happier and more valuable customers" which is amusing given the job he did at American. After reading the word salad of a description I don't really have any idea what exactly it is that Dihedral, and Raja, do, but there you go.
Please, oh please, do not have AA and AS merge. AS has it's own issues and has lost some of it's shine, but having AA take them over would be horrible.
He's a step in the right direction. AA waited too long to understand there is a consumer segment that will pay for a better experience and not just the cheapest price point.
Mr. Pieper presents a nice little four-piece pie (executives of all stripes and seniority like to use pies to draw metaphorical pictures) to describe his areas of focus: Network, Customer Experience, Revenue+Sales, and Loyalty.
Nowhere in that list is Labor, which is a giant area of required improvement, especially front-line facing employees. If he's bundling inflight service (surly, angry flight attendants who don't give a rat's patootie) into "Customer Experience" then he's not fully appreciating the scope of his job and the size of the challenge he's facing. Labor needs to have its own pie slice, perhaps even two.